With the advent of charcoal briquets, gas fired barbecues and stove top grills, the natural smoke flavoring imparted to foods by traditional grilling methods, such as over smoldering wood coals, has been lost. Consequently, it has become desirable to be able to provide a natural wood smoke flavoring to foods cooked by these methods. Several unsatisfactory techniques have been proposed.
One prior art technique for imparting a smoke flavor to cooked meats and the like is to soak the food in a chemical flavoring agent.
This approaches suffer from a number of drawbacks. First is the natural concern of soaking an edible foodstuff in an unknown chemical agent. The risks associated with these chemicals are not yet fully known. A second drawback is that these chemicals sometimes act to draw out the food's natural juices to the surface, from which location they can drip to the barbecue or be consumed by fire. The loss of these natural juices dries out the food and sometimes alters its normal taste. A final drawback of the chemical approach is the attendant sacrifice in smoke flavor. Most smoke flavoring chemicals are entirely artificial. The flavor they impart bears little resemblance to the true wood smoke flavor being imitated. Even those chemical flavoring agents that are actually derived from wood products perform poorly because many of the desirable flavors obtained from wood smoking are formed when the aromatic agents within the wood are combusted. The chemicals used to treat the food are not combusted, as they are usually absorbed into the food and not heated to ignition. Consequently, even with "natural" liquid smoking agents, the desired traditional smoke flavor is not obtained.
An approach related to soaking the food in a chemical flavoring agent is to enclose the food in a casing formed from precipitate materials derived from these chemical agents. This approach also suffers from the above-recited drawbacks. Examples of this approach are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,446,167 and 4,442,868.
Yet another approach to imparting a smoke flavoring to cooking foods is to provide a packet of smoke producing material, such as wood flour, in a Kraft paper wrapper suspended above the coals of the barbecue. When the Kraft paper is ignited by the hot coals, the wood flour spills onto the coals and ignites, thereby producing smoke. U.S. Pat. 4,190,667 to Robins shows such a system.
Although an improvement over the chemical treatment methods, this Robins approach still suffers from several drawbacks. One is that the smoke is generated by the ignition of the wood flour. Such ignition consumes the entire material quickly and produces only a small amount of smoke. A second drawback is that the wood flour falls onto the coals all at once when the Kraft paper burns through. Accordingly, the smoke so generated is produced all at once and is not released continuously during cooking of the food. As a final drawback, the Kraft paper wrapper is moisture permeable, thereby allowing the wood flour material contained therein to dry out and lose much of its aromatic quality.
Still another approach to generating wood-flavored smoke is to add wood chips to the coals of a barbecue. The chips can be soaked in water to slow their combustion. Despite such precautions, the chips nonetheless are consumed quickly and the smoke produced therefrom is consequently of short duration. Furthermore, this technique cannot be used with devices such as gas fired barbecues or stove top grills because such devices might be damaged in the process.
A final prior art smoke producing system is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,967,023 to Huckabee. Huckabee uses a perforated aluminum bag that contains a smoke producing material such as wood chips. In use, the bag is placed on the coals, thereby heating the wood chips and causing them to smolder. The wood chips are not permitted to ignite because the perforations are too small to admit air sufficient to support combustion. As the chips within the bag smolder, smoke is emitted through the perforations.
Although an improvement over prior art methods, the Huckabee device still leaves substantial opportunities for improvement.
In order to overcome the numerous drawbacks found in the prior art, an improved device for producing smoke in a barbecue or the like has been devised.
It is one object of the present invention to provide a smoke generating device that limits exposure of the smoke generating material contained therein to the surrounding environment until the device is used.
It is another object of the present invention to prevent the loss of moisture from smoke generating material in a smoke generating device until the device is used.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a smoke generating device in which smoke exhaust holes are automatically uncovered when the device is used in a barbecue or the like.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide smoke generating device in which exposure of the smoke generating material to the surrounding environment is prevented by a sealing material that can be removed before the device is used.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.